In a general process of butchering a poultry carcass of a fowl such as a chicken into a meat portion and a bone portion, butchering and deboning are performed after feather removal, blood draining, and removal of guts and the like (evisceration). Human labor cannot efficiently perform the butchering-and-deboning processes for poultry carcasses, and thus has been taken over by automated processes. For many years, the present applicant has been engaged in development of the automated deboning technologies for poultry carcasses.
In the course of automated butchering-and-deboning processes of an upper body of a poultry carcass, from which legs and guts are removed to leave only the upper body, the poultry carcass is placed and fixed on a fixing jig of a cone shape, which is referred to as a “cone”, to retain an appropriate posture of the poultry carcass through the entire deboning process, as the poultry carcass is carried through a plurality of processing stations to be butchered and deboned.
The butchering-and-deboning processes include a step of separating a breast-meat portion with a wing from a bone section called “gara (waste bone)”. To separate a breast-meat portion with a wing from a gara with a high yield, a meat portion is separated from a shoulder blade of a poultry carcass in a shoulder-blade incision-making step, and a body gara and an upper arm bone are cut at a shoulder joint section in a shoulder incision-making step, as a pretreatment.
Patent Document 1 discloses performing a shoulder-blade incision-making step by using a cutting blade mounted to a robot arm of four-axis control.
Patent Document 2 discloses performing a shoulder-blade incision-making step by carrying a poultry carcass fixed to a fixing jig called a carrier and using a scraper fixed so as to face a conveyor path.
Patent Document 3 discloses an automated deboning apparatus for deboning an upper body of a poultry carcass, and FIG. 8 discloses a shoulder incision-making step of cutting apart a shoulder joint section and an upper-arm bone head. Patent Document 3 discloses, in FIG. 1, providing a shoulder cutting part 22b (3rd station) for making an incision on a skin of an upper shoulder section and a shoulder incision-making part 23w (4th station) for cutting apart a shoulder joint section and an upper-arm bone head.